I know what you’re thinking: I must have been a death-rocker in the mid-80’s, back before black was the new pink. No, goth. Definitely goth. Robie, my good college friend, supplied this incriminating photographic evidence.

Here my dark secret is exposed: I was a goth child, seen here communing with a conch. This was the precise merger of the known and unknown, the outer shell that is seen by the outside world vs. the inner sanctum of the shell.

Photo by Leland Bond-Upson, Recolored by Robie Schriber

This was my natural state, prior to public school, genderization, and exposure to social expectation.

Seriously? No, not really. I did play with GI Joe before I picked up the Barbie habit…but I had an alternative motive for choosing black.

I loved black because I’d realized that all of the outlines in cartoons were thin black lines. I realized that black encompassed the world and imagined lines around everything. I hadn’t heard of negative space, outer space, or the spaces in-between. I just saw the common thread, and it was black.

This was the age when I became an artist.

Welcome to my site, StudioBond.net, and thank you for visiting my corner of the Interweb.

I’m a freelance artist living in the San Francisco Bay Area and I work in traditional watercolor, ink, and digital paint. I’ve worked in industries like table-top games, book covers, and fine art. I’m passionate about visual storytelling because I believe that stories are even more powerful than facts; and as artists, we have the awesome power to inspire, build empathy, and lift people up. That’s why my mission is to create artwork that empowers you to reach your dreams!